"Because of that very incoherence, the latest media obsession, if it lasts, will be good news for Russia and China. A renewed American involvement with the Middle East can only ease China's path to dominance in the Western Pacific and Russia's path to increasing influence in Central and Eastern Europe. The decade following 9/11 is instructive in this regard. While the United States was preoccupied with Afghanistan and Iraq, Chinese naval forces emerged as a major geopolitical factor in East Asia, threatening American allies from Japan to the Philippines: 9/11 was literally a godsend to Chinese military planners. Will the videos of the beheadings of two American journalists and a British aid worker be of continued benefit to the Chinese, and a godsend now to the Russians?"
